Refractions
by Louise Foxhall
Summary: For Round 2 of the Diversity Competition; what Ginny Weasley really thinks of herself. "...You don't even recognise who – what – you've become anymore" - her and Dean's relationship during HBP. Please R&R.


You don't know how much more of this you can take; kissing one boy's lips only to taste another's, slipping your fingers between his and feeling his hand squeeze yours back. His hands pinch yours a little too tight – he's strong, well-built and attractive and yet to you, it feels wrong. It hurts. But sometimes, in the dead of night, if you scrunch up your eyes and curl up, under the quilts, you can pretend, if only in sleep, that it feels right.

You don't know why you started this lying. You've never been one for lying but it's got so bad recently that you can't always remember the truth amongst the stories that you've spun. It wouldn't even be so bad if it was just yourself that you were lying to. Your heart can cope with being beaten and bruised and broken into a thousand pieces but his can't and you feel sick with guilt as you realise what a monster you've turned into.

But then you see him and the guilt abates, just a little.

You see him, with his hair, ruffled by the wind, and his glasses slightly askew on the bridge of his nose and you know that you belong with him, not with anyone else, no matter how you like to pretend otherwise.

You think he's caught on. Dean, that is. Dean your boyfriend, Dean who loves you so much, who kisses away the tears that are brought on – rarely – when the situation becomes too helpless for you to handle, Dean who held your hair back when you were vomiting – sick with the fear and the guilt and the desperation you felt. You think he's noticed that you always embrace Harry for that second too long after a victory on the Quidditch pitch and you think he's perceived a certain change in your personality whenever Harry's in earshot. You think he's twigged all this and yet he doesn't confront you, or chastise you, but instead he remains as sweet as ever, leaving flowers for you at breakfast, tucking notes in amongst your notes; "just to say I love you". But it only makes it worse. It makes it harder for you to pretend, for you to hide. Because he doesn't treat you like the monster you are, he treats you like you are the most special girl in the world when you know he could do so much better than a heart that's been long claimed by another.

You know that's why you're always fighting. He only has to say the littlest thing and you're off, like a firecracker. You want to start a fight, to provoke him, to make him yell at you. You want him to scream and shout because it will make you feel better. You want to make him hurt even more to try to mend the damage you've done to yourself. You're selfish.

Seldom will he bite back but when you anger him so much, when you throw everything in his face, words skimming round Harry's name all the time, he doe, but it only makes you feel worse. Dean hates raising his voice, especially to his friends, especially to you – because he loves you, he really and truly loves you and you feel bad when you realise this, because honestly, Dean is so wonderful and sweet to you and he'd be all you ever wanted if it wasn't for Harry.

You honestly think the dishonesty might kill you after endless nights with no sleep and all the stress. You know your grades are dropping and you know how disappointed that'll make your parents, so that's just another burden to add to the heavy weight pressing down on you all the time. It's so hard…these are supposed to be the best days of your life and yet all you feel is unhappiness, seeping through you to the core and the only way you can think to survive is to ensconce yourself further in this miserable situation and to hope that by doing so the worry will give way to a happiness found only in love but you know it won't.

You think that this is the ideal opportunity to make things right to make amend; Dean wants to take your relationship further, and you agree. You spend the night in his bed. You're so scared when the time comes, heart beating frantically beneath your ribs and you're so relieved that he will think it's just excitement and you're so thankful for the dark so that he can't see the traces of tears leaking from the corners of your eyes. This isn't like you – to cry – you've cried so much in the last month, perhaps more now than ever before but you don't even recognise who – what – you've become anymore. You make Dean swear he won't tell anyone. You sneak in after dark and you pretend that it's only so Ron doesn't find out and lay one on Dean but really you know it's so the boy in the next bed can't hear the moans and know that it's you. You realise with an erratic heartbeat that Harry is only meters away, separated only by two pairs of curtains and you smile and close your eyes, as if you're enjoying it, and pretend the guy above you is him.

You creep out again before dawn the next morning – secrecy is of the utmost importance to you, the whole, sordid affair was conducted with thorough secrecy - and though he complains he lets you go. You leave his bed, wrapped in a sheet and you spend an hour in the shower, scrubbing every inch of yourself clean and don't stop until every trace of Dean's body, of his scent, is lost to soap and vanilla shampoo.

You've never told anyone about this. It only happened once. Your relationship was too short; it was over within a week of this happening. Even Harry never found out. You were too ashamed to admit to it; too scared he'd see you as cheap and leave you, so you let him think he was the first one. Really, to you, he was. What happened with Dean meant almost nothing. Almost. You cringe when you realise this but it's true – you're a monster, a terrible person – but there was a shred of something there, though what is was you're not sure. It wasn't love. You never loved anyone but Harry – it was always him. Michael and Dean; they were never anything but a distraction. It makes you feel dirty to think about it but you console yourself that you're a teenager, you can't be held responsible for what your body feels – you need love, the kind of love that isn't absent-minded and parental.

You wish so badly that someone – Harry – would look at you like he used to look at Cho, the way that Bill (however stupidly) looks at Fleur.

You write Dean a letter one night, two days after you slept with him, you write him a letter and explain everything to him…everything that you felt was spilt onto the parchment as if you were speaking to Tom again. You think, as you write, that maybe you did love Tom, Tom the illusion, because he was everything you thought Harry to be, but better, because you thought that your naïve feelings were reciprocated by someone who turned out to be Lord Voldemort. That still gives you nightmares.

You leave the letter on Dean's pillow, where your head had laid that night. You think you can still smell vanilla. You pretend that you have gone to borrow a book of Ron's when Dean catches you on the staircase but the lie is discovered when he comes to you after dinner, the note clutched tight in his hand. He thrusts it back at you and demands to know what it means but you both know what it means; it means goodbye.


End file.
